ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Donald Trump nominated Nikki Haley as the administration’s ambassador to the United Nations. She seems to have mistaken the signal. She thinks she’s the Nikki Haley ambassador to the U.N. Or maybe Hillary Clinton’s.
Trump has repeatedly reminded Americans that he is the president of the United States, not president of the World. His constitutional duty is exclusively to defend the American people against actual or imminent aggression with invincible self-defense, not to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. During the campaign, he embraced the sentiments of Sen. Henry Clay’s rebuff of Hungary’s plea for United States military intervention to protect against the Russian Bear:
“Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty, that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of the fallen or failing republics in Europe.”
Nikki Haley didn’t get the message. During a February meeting of the U.N. Security Council, she said, “our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine.” At the 2016 Republican National Convention, however, nominee Trump blocked a proposal for economic warfare against Russia to retaliate for its annexation of Crimea and occupation of eastern Ukraine.
Mrs. Haley might as well have been Hillary Clinton’s U.N. ambassador. Mrs. Clinton also championed gladiatorial opposition towards Russia during her campaign. “We have to do more to get back to talking about how we try to confine, contain, deter Russian aggression in Europe and beyond.” Candidate Clinton insisted that the U.S. should send more funding to Kiev and provide new equipment and training for the Ukrainians in retaliation for the Russian annexation of Crimea.
As regards “humanitarian war,” Mrs. Haley and Mrs. Clinton are two peas in a pod. Last April, Ambassador Haley at the U.N. Security Council threatened a United States humanitarian war against Syria to diminish the grisliness of civilian killings there. “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action. For the sake of the victims, I hope the rest of the council is finally willing to do the same.”
Mrs. Haley’s words echoed Hillary Clinton. As then-Secretary of State in 2011, Mrs. Clinton said that humanitarian concerns justified a war to overthrow Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. It predictably turned Libya into a wilderness and a mecca for terrorists, but Mrs. Clinton called it peace and “smart power at its best.” In 2013, Mrs. Clinton supported President Barack Obama’s exhortation to Congress to authorize war against Syrian President Bashir-al Assad under a humanitarian banner.
In contrast to Mrs. Haley and Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has pledged to withdraw from our trillion-dollar military capers in the Middle East that have only compounded horrifying carnage and needlessly forced courageous American soldiers to give or risk that last full measure of devotion to conceal amateurish political miscalculations:
“[W]hat we’ve done in the Middle East, we’ve spent $4 trillion and we’re far worse than when the first gunshot that was fired … and we’ve got to at some point get out of there, because we have to rebuild our country.”
In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations last March, Ambassador Haley spoke like a mouthpiece of Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Haley sermonized that the United States would work tirelessly to purge the planet of immorality. In a homily worthy of John Knox, she gave failing grades to several nations deficient in human rights: “The United States is the moral conscience of the world. We will not walk away from this role, but we will insist that our participation in the UN honor and reflect this role. For me, human rights are at the heart of the mission of the United Nations.” That simply parroted what Mrs. Clinton had preached during her bumbling presidential campaign. “Part of what makes America an exceptional nation is that we are also an indispensable nation. In fact, we are the indispensable nation. People all over the world look to us and follow our lead.”
During his visit to Saudi Arabia last May, President Trump repudiated the Haley-Clinton “White Man’s Burden” vision of the United States. “We are not here to lecture. We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be or how to worship.”
When will Ambassador Haley awaken from her intellectual stupor and remember that Mr. Trump, not Hillary Clinton, won the 2016 presidential election?
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